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On The Move: Games And Gaming Figures In Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature, Douglas Anthony Guerra
On The Move: Games And Gaming Figures In Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature, Douglas Anthony Guerra
Dissertations (1 year embargo)
In this dissertation, I analyze the way that gameplay, considered broadly, both facilitated and informed representations of agency in the nineteenth century. In effect, games were archives of possibility made procedurally discrete, rendering modes of action and agency legible in ways that are suggested, although differently engaged, in their somewhat less ephemeral cousins: books. Understanding that both games and books emerged from within similar fields of cultural production and often marketed themselves to the same audiences, I argue that taking a technical and materially historical approach to games helps us to explore major literary works of the period to startlingly …
Infectious Agents: Race And Environment In Nineteenth-Century America, Kristen Renee Egan
Infectious Agents: Race And Environment In Nineteenth-Century America, Kristen Renee Egan
Dissertations
This dissertation critically examines the relationship between race and nature in nineteenth-century America by analyzing texts that attempt to discover, create, or preserve a pure national identity. Historical events in the nineteenth-century U.S. - such as mass immigration, Native American displacement, industrialization, westward expansion, and the rise of science - frustrated the quest for a unified American identity. While these events seem various, each one exacerbated a nation already bewildered by one central question. What is the traffic between body and space? Nineteenth-century American literature frequently portrays the American environment as an ideal space in need of preservation and at …